he divineth

44:5 he divineth. It is very unlikely that godly Joseph would ever have used such an occult device as a divining cup. It was, however, a costly silver cup and, if the brothers thought it was really a divining cup, they would be terrified of imminent retribution if the superstitious Egyptians thought they had stolen it. Probably the penalty for such a crime would be death (Genesis 44:9), Joseph wanted to put them to the final test, to see if they would take advantage of this opportunity to rid themselves of Benjamin, as they had once thought to do with Joseph. As it turned out, they passed this test with flying colors.